Lisa Volpe – författare

A groundbreaking introduction to the photographic work of an iconic modern artistThe pathbreaking artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) is revered for her iconic paintings of flowers, skyscrapers, animal skulls, and Southwestern landscapes. Her photographic work, however, has not been explored in depth until now. After the death of her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, in 1946, photography indeed became an important part of O’Keeffe’s artistic production. She trained alongside the photographer Todd Webb, revisiting subjects that she had painted years before—landforms of the Southwest, the black door in her courtyard, the road outside her window, and flowers. O’Keeffe’s carefully composed photographs are not studies of detail or decisive moments; rather, they focus on the arrangement of forms.   This is the first major investigation of O’Keeffe’s photography and traces the artist’s thirty-year exploration of the medium, including a complete catalogue of her photographic work. Essays by leading scholars address O’Keeffe’s photographic approach and style and situate photography within the artist’s overall practice. This richly illustrated volume significantly broadens our understanding of one of the most innovative artists of the twentieth century. Published in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, HoustonExhibition Schedule:Museum of Fine Arts, Houston(October 17, 2021–January 17, 2022)  Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA(February 26–June 12, 2022)  Denver Art Museum(July 3–November 6, 2022)  Cincinnati Art Museum(February 3–May 7, 2023)

Robert Frank’s and Todd Webb’s parallel 1955 projects to photograph America are considered in the context of mid-twentieth-century American culture  In 1955 two photographers were awarded grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to embark on trips across the United States. Robert Frank (1924–2019) drove coast to coast, photographing the highways, bars, and people that formed the basis for his widely admired publication The Americans (1958). Todd Webb (1905–2000) walked across the country, searching for “vanishing Americana and what is taking its place.”  Unaware of each other’s work, the photographers produced strikingly similar images of the highway, parades, and dim, smoky barrooms. Yet while Frank’s grainy, off-kilter style revealed many inequities of American life, Webb’s carefully composed images embraced clear detail and celebrated the individual oddities of Americans and their locales.  This revelatory book is the first to publish Webb’s 1955 photographs and connects these parallel projects for the first time. More than one hundred images accompany text illuminating Frank’s and Webb’s different perspectives and approaches to similar subjects and places; the difference in reception of Frank’s iconic work and Webb’s relatively unknown series; and the place of the road trip in shaping American identity at midcentury.  Published in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston  Exhibition Schedule:  Museum of Fine Arts, Houston(October 8, 2023–January 7, 2024)    Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts(February 10–July 30, 2024)    Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania(February 8–May 4, 2025)